LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy

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First details and screens from the second game. May the Force be with you.

By Douglass C. Perry

Cynical, experienced gamers may still be shaking their heads at one of 2005's biggest success stories. Lego Star Wars, a game LucasArts licensed to Eidos in 2005, was one of the most dubious cross-licensed games ever. A Lego and Star Wars combination? Sounds like someone placed a wolf in charge of the henhouse.

Racking up huge sales and taking the ranking of 13th best selling title of 2005, Lego Star Wars, an action platformer that charmed kids, parents, and everyone in between, was one of those feel-good games. The single-player game was tongue-in-cheek cute. The concept was pulled off perfectly from both a game design and visual standpoint, and the co-op capabilities pushed it into the must-have category.

LucasArts has teamed up with Traveller's Tales and Giant (the game's original developer and producer) to create this year's sequel, LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy, due on PS2, Xbox, GameCube, GBA, PSP, PC and DS this fall. We spoke with David Perkinson, a fairly new hire at LucasArts, though not new to the industry, as he's worked on Gretzky NHL (PSP), Gretzky NHL '05 (PS2), and Gretzky NHL '06 (PSP and PS2). Perkinson explained how LucasArts plans to add new functionality, more Force powers, and a more robust custom character building feature. They're also aiming to tap into the original movie's best scenes and make it work on even more systems.

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IGN: The first LEGO Star Wars was a very surprising success. Why did Eidos publish it in the first place, and why is LucasArts publishing it now?

David Perkinson: I've only been with LucasArts for a short time, but this is what I've learned. Although LucasArts does indeed publish the bulk of Star Wars games released, partnerships are often formed with outside publishers such as Eidos, Ubisoft and THQ for certain titles. The first LEGO Star Wars was one of these, and was successful enough to be the No. 13 game of 2005. However, we realized that a game based on the Original Trilogy can be even bigger if in the hands of the company that does Star Wars best, and -- especially after seeing LucasArts' tremendous success with Star Wars Battlefront II and the Star Wars: Episode III movie game -- they turned back to LucasArts to publish this exciting new sequel.

IGN: In the first game, you could play as approximately 50 characters. How will this sequel be different and better in this respect?

David Perkinson: LEGO Star Wars II will feature more than 50 playable characters from all of the classic Original Trilogy movies, and many of the characters will have distinctive weapons, signature animations and melee attacks.

In addition, players will be able to import their saved game data from LEGO Star Wars I and use all the characters that were unlocked from the first game on many of the platforms. That brings the total number of playable Star Wars characters to over 100!

Most importantly, LEGO Star Wars II offers the new customizable character feature. This new feature will allow the player to use pieces and parts from all unlocked characters to put together their own creations and then use them in Free Play mode. At last count, this system allowed for -- no joking -- millions of different customization options for individual characters!

Lastly, when the player mixes up the various pieces of the characters in the creation process, the game will automatically generate a new and unique name for the newly created character based on the pieces used. For example, if you mix up the right variety of pieces you could end up with your very own Chew Vader, Stormbacca or Leia Wan Kenobi.

IGN: Will LEGO Star Wars II be online? If not, why not? The two-player co-op online game would be HUGE!

David Perkinson: Certainly, one of the things that we considered adding to the game was online co-op, but our research shows that only a small percentage of gamers would actually utilize such a feature. We'd rather apply the time and money that it takes to ensure a flawless online experience toward making our offline game even better, which benefits more people. Adding one new feature instead of many new features seemed like the wrong step for this game and for the gamer.